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A Rose For Emily Mental Illness Essay

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Mental illness is a real disease. Going through life pretending nothing is wrong and fake smiling through all of the pain. In William Faulkner’s short story “A Rose for Emily,” the main character, Emily Gierson, is depressed and suffering from mental illness that eventually takes her over. Throughout “A Rose for Emily”, her illness worsens to the point that she is isolated and lonely after her father's death. Homer Barron, her new profound love interest, strikes her eye as he is telling her that he will be in town for the next couple of weeks while he is working on the sidewalks outside. Emily and Homer start dating and Emily finds out that Homer is not a marrying type of suitor. While Emily deceives Homer into thinking that she is ok with …show more content…

As Faulkner is describing Miss Emily in the beginning of the story, They rose when she entered-- a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt…… looked bloated…. Eyes lost in the fatty ridges of her face.” “Faulkner”. Faulkner dedicated a paragraph to describe Miss Emily. Throughout these details an image starts to form and the image makes readers feel as if they are experiencing this story. Faulkner uses his expertise to give examples of imagery, “They broke open the cellar door and sprinkled lime there and in all the outbuildings.” . The townspeople could not stand the smell that had been coming from Miss Emily’s home, after having a conversation, they finally agreed on going to her home at midnight and sprinkling lime to contraband the smell after about two weeks, it worked. With the examples of evidence I have shown, Faulkner uses imagery to develop his way of describing the presentation of certain town folks and the pungent smells coming from Miss Emily’s …show more content…

Emily went to get poison for “rats”. As the druggist was listing some poison that is specifically used for rats, Miss Emily said, “Arsenic…Is that a good one?” (Faulkner) Emily wanted arsenic to kill “rats” but the druggist knew that arsenic was not not a normal drug used to kill rats, so he was skeptical. After Miss Emily had the arsenic, she took it back to her house and put in Homer’s drink and he died. But, what the towns folks did not was that, “The man himself lay in the bed…Then we noticed that in the second pillow was the indentation of a head. After Emily murders Homer, she takes him and puts him in a bed where she would be sleeping with him for the next 30 years. Faulkner uses his combination of vocabulary and whit to create a subliminal

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Emily was growing old. Her hair was shortening and turning gray. Soon after realizing that “Homer was not the marrying man” and that he would much rather spend his time with young male mates, Emily decided to retaliate. In order to not lose what she thought was the love of her life, Emily went down to the nearest drug store and bought some rat poison and gave it to Homer. Homer died and Emily kept his body in the upstairs room where no one would dare to go.

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-“So the next night, after midnight, four men crossed Miss Emily 's lawn and slunk about the house like burglars, sniffing along the base of the brickwork,” (Faulkner II). -“When her father died, it got about that the house was all that was left to her; and in a way, people were glad,” (Faulkner II). -“The day after his death all the ladies prepared to call at the house and offer condolence and aid,” (Faulkner

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In the early 1950s, the fear of Communism washed over America. Whether it be the end of Harry S. Truman’s eight years in the Oval Office or the beginning of Dwight D. Eisenhower’s two-terms, the political pendulum in the United States violently swung back towards conservatism. In The Crucible, by Arthur Miller, and Inherit the Wind, by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Edwin Lee, fear is the driving force of prejudice. Respected political philosopher Thomas Paine made the claim, “It is from a strange mixture of tyranny and cowardice that exclusions have been set up and continued. The boldness to do wrong at first, changes afterwards into cowardly craft, and at last into fear.”

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This was hinting someone was gonna die. what could she have possibly used that for. She is asked to say why she bought it but emily doesn’t say, she pays it and leaves. Emily has a hard time admitting and letting go of things, such as her father’s death, she cant imagine that being real, and buying rat poisoning and not saying what she will be using it for, or hiding Homer’s body in a room no one can go in to. There are many clues that Faulkner used to show foreshadowing throughout the story.

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She lived in an isolated world after her father’s death. Finally, she meets Homer; Homer was a man who knew what he wanted in life, and Miss Emily was not part of it. This drove Miss Emily to do the unthinkable, and she bought rat poison and killed Homer. Years passed, and no one knew that Miss Emily killed Homer and had him lying in the upstairs bed dead. It was intel her death that the towns people realized that miss Emily had become mentally ill with the death of her father and

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After reading A Rose for Emily by William Faulkner, many people initially wonder why Miss Emily would murder Homer Barron. When reviewing the events of the story, it becomes apparent that she displayed symptoms, manifestations of her mental state in her behavior, of being socially inept and thus capable of this heinous crime. These symptoms are unsurprising, as her father represses her, withholding her from the public. Emily accordingly displays symptoms of this repression by evading authorities and the townspeople. Faulkner is trying to get the reader to go back and review this problem-the cause of Homer’s murder- by identifying the signs that this crime occurred and Emily’s symptoms of mental instability.

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Faulkner claims ¨he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks club and that he was not a marrying man¨ Faulkner implies Homer is not a man who intends to marry. Aware that Emily executes Homer, so he will be with her forever but Emily drops out of society after she kills him. Although townspeople just pity her and no proper treatment was given to Emily, she shows definite symptoms of schizophrenia. Another reason why Emily suffers from schizophrenia is her peculiar behaviors. Emily refuses to accept the death of her father and kills Homer because she is fearful of letting him go just like her father.

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In Emily’s purchase of clothes and a toilet set for Homer, the author hopes to mix confusion within the plot of the story, while also foreshadowing how these clothes will dress Homer’s dead body. He writes, “We learned that Miss Emily had been to the jeweler’s and ordered a man’s toilet set in silver, with the letters H. B. on each piece. Two days later we learned that she had bought a complete outfit of men’s clothing, including a nightshirt, and we said, ‘They are married.’ We were really glad” (Faulkner 5). When initially reviewing this segment, readers are inclined to believe that possibly Emily’s story would not be of calamity and death, as Faulkner shapes what appears to be a loving marriage between Miss Emily and Mr. Barron.

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Throughout the story, the main character, Miss Emily Grierson, shows signs of what appears to be some form of mental illness. Although Faulkner never states that Miss Emily has anything wrong with her mental health, he does provide enough evidence to support that she is not psychologically stable. In “A Rose for Emily,” Faulkner portrays the main character as a mysterious icon of the small town of Jefferson, Mississippi. As the story states, Emily’s father is an admirable figure in the city of Jefferson. After his passing, the townspeople show the same respect for Emily, as well.

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“We remembered all the young men her father had driven away” (453). Miss Emily’s father drove away young men interested in her, not allowing her to have a love life and therefore a life outside of him. This controlling treatment of Miss Emily by Mr. Grierson coincides with Emily’s fight to control her love life with Homer. “Because Homer himself had remarked - he liked men, and it was known that he drank with the younger men in the Elks’ Club - that he was not a marrying man” (454). If it weren’t for the fact that Miss Emily murdered Homer, he would have left her, therefore she used the murder as a way to keep him close to

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Emily’s Mental Deterioration The short story “A Rose for Emily” is written by, William Faulkner, a Nobel Prize winner novelist. The story is told back and forth in a series of flashbacks of Emily’s life, by the townspeople who were more curious about her life than anything else. Emily was not like the rest of the townspeople and didn’t care to mingle. Emily was known as a respectful monument, as she was the last member from an aristocratic family from after the Civil war.

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Mental Illness in “A Rose for Emily” In William Faulkner’s short story, “A Rose for Emily,” the theme of mental illness is central to the plot and character development. Faulkner’s protagonist, Miss Emily Grierson, is an eccentric, reclusive woman who becomes progressively more isolated and unstable throughout the story. This instability of Emily is cleverly conveyed by Faulkner in the non-sequential structure of this short story.

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After Emily’s father’s death, she doesn’t keep the house clean anymore, the first floor is closed off, and the home begins to smell of a strong stench. Dust begins to fall on everything in the house “…smelled of dust and disuse—a close, dank smell” (Faulkner 629). As the house is no longer being maintained, so too is Emily as she begins to age and descends into madness. Thomas Dilworth, journalist, quoted “In her personal life, Emily reproduced the pattern of this social myth by twice keeping at home the bodies of dead loved ones while refusing to acknowledge their deaths” (Dilworth). Faulkner relates the use of arsenic as a symbol of getting rid of a rat, specifically, Homer because he had no intentions of marrying Emily.

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“Emily takes the offensive by poisoning Homer so he can’t abandon her. The discovery of a strand of her hair on the pillow next to the rotting corpse suggests that she slept with the cadaver or, even worse, had sex with it. Emily’s repressive life therefore contributes to her (rather severe) psychological abnormality: necrophilia” (D. Akers). Her loneliness must have been the start of her abnormal behavior and motivation of

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